For those of you who enjoy reading Young Adult fiction, “All Right Now” by Gary Schmidt and “Eleanor and Park” by Rainbow Rowell are wonderful.
I highly recommend “The Boys in the Boat”, by Daniel James Brown. It’s about the USA’s 9-man rowing team that won the gold medal in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, in Nazi Germany. Great book!!
That sounds interesting!
I just finished “Imperial Dreams: Tracking the Imperial Woodpecker Through the Wild Sierra Madre”. Fantastic!
The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. Wonderful.
Another Meg Wolitzer. The Wife. Wow! It was great.
Mother Daughter Me, a memoir by a journalist about her attempt to live with her mother and her teenage daughter. It was featured in the NY Times parenting blog:
<a href=“http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/mother-daughter-me-the-best-memoir-ive-read-this-year/[/url]”>http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/mother-daughter-me-the-best-memoir-ive-read-this-year/</a>
Just read “Day After Night” by Anita Diamant. So moving…I was in tears a couple of times and at the end.
Finished “The Stockholm Octavo” and really enjoyed it. Now I’m reading two - “The Interestings” and “The Forgotten Garden.”
I also enjoyed “Day After Night” by Anita Diamant although it did end rather abruptly. I wanted to know so much more about these women and their lives afterward. This was a book on my list that I had wanted to read and was a book that I picked up for almost nothing when Borders went out of business.. I was so happy that I did. Sadly I gave it a friend who had a long recuperation from surgery and never saw it again…but I would definitely re-read.
I am reading a book now that I am finding really fascinating. It is “The Arrogant Years” by Lucette Lagnado, a memoir about her life and her family’s life as Jews who had to leave Cairo in the early sixties..but it is really about her mother’s life growing up in Cairo and a vanished world. It is the sequel to her first book which I believe is about her father growing up in Cairo and after. It is next on my list, “The Man in the White Sharskin Suit”.
I just finished Defending Jacob. Will have a hard time falling asleep tonight.
I’m reading The Cuckoo’s Calling by “Robert Galbraith aka JK Rowling”. It’s so far better written than detective stories. The pages reek of Rowling’s earthy vividness and careful ordering. E.g., the first paragraphs each hide their meanings until their last lines.
I gather she sued her lawyers for outing her and they’ve agreed to contribute to a soldier’s charity as recompense. And she’s donating the royalties for 3 years - which didn’t amount to much before it was known as her work.
“Me Before You” by Jojo Moyes.
My pick for best book of the year .
I am probably hopelessly behind all of you again (darned job, just need to quit so I can read!). But I am really enjoying Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce series. First one is “The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie”, am currently almost done with the second. D2 is really very much like Flavia… right down to the interest in poisons! :eek:
^^^ Yes! Another Flavia de Luce fan here. Well, two of us actually as both my daughter and I thoroughly enjoy the series.
Do you know that there is to be a 10-episode TV series? (British - director/producer Sam Mendes)
[‘Flavia</a> de Luce’ author thrilled with TV series | Metro](<a href=“http://metronews.ca/scene/533607/flavia-de-luce-author-thrilled-with-tv-series/]'Flavia”>http://metronews.ca/scene/533607/flavia-de-luce-author-thrilled-with-tv-series/)
Didn’t know – just happy that I still have a few of the books already on the shelf in the library to “binge read” through in the next couple of weeks. 
Cuckoo’s Calling was incredibly entertaining. I recommend it to anyone who likes detective stories. 5 stars out of 5
Language of Flowers wasn’t bad. It is an interesting perspective. 3 stars out of 5.
Lexicon was a mediocre thriller that was highly recommended to me. There were several problems with the plot, but the concept of language having the power to manipulate/control behavior was clever. 2.5 stars out of 5.
I really liked “Orphan Train”
Just read The Innocents, on someone’s rec upthread. Very good, and I’m still thinking about the characters. Not sure about Ellie’s voice, however…some of her “speeches” didn’t ring true. I feel like she was a hard one for the author to sketch.
Really liked Language of Flowers, Rules of Civility, The Kitchen House and The Round House. Didn’t care for Life After Life. Now on to mindless end of summer reading! Hoping Cuckoo’s Calling is good!
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse! Gave me a perspective as to my place in this world!